$50 Rustoleum paint job

[flyinpiper]

Hello all,
I know a few purists are going to hate this, but it was a fun project. I picked up this 77 basket case for a song and wanted to see how inexpensivley I could fix it up. Needed a timing belt to run, still needs a bunch of electrical work. Paint was faded and cracking (suprisingly little rust, body was in good shape). Interior was trashed. Picked up some black carpet from home depot, seat covers, cleaned up the interior.
Then trying to figure out what to do with the paint. I love the lines on the car and decided to have some fun with it. I found an article online about the $50 roll on paint with enamel rustomleum, being a bit finanially challenged, I decided to give it a try. I am actually really blown away how nice the paint came out. There are some small flaws when you get up close and inspect it, people still don't believe it was a roll on paint job though. But it was fun and cheap to do.
In the process of replaceing the tailights with the 5" round lights (the stock square ones are ugly). Going through the wiring, needs a tune up, should have it on the road in a couple weeks.
If you are on a tight budget, the rustoleum really works!

[flyinpiper]

I will have to post the pics again. apparently facebook pics wont work...

[RRoller123]

I did a '57 Mercedes 219 rust bucket with rattle can Rustoleum grey back when I was a kid. Took about 20 cans I think, and it looked surprisingly good too!

[Exit98]

photobucket works fine. Resize to about 650 or so across.

Hurry up, want to see that shiny new paintjob.

[flyinpiper]

Finally worked...

[vandor]

How much time did you spend wet sanding? I heard it takes many many hours to wet sand that paint flat.
Please elaborate on the process.
Thanks,

[btoran]

show us some pictures of the bat cave!

[flyinpiper]

Batcave is in the background of the pics!
Actually, this was way easier than I thought it would be. Just depends how perfect you want the paint job to be. There are tons of videos and articles online how to do it. I only put 5 coats on mine, I was happy with the way it looked. Some people did 8-10. As for the time and the work, the only hard sanding was the initial. Used a little body fill on a few small dents. The intitial prep is everything. I read that you do not need to use a primer with this paint job, but if you use any bondo, it soaks up the paint and add to the coats, do a primer. I used a 50/50 (half paint, half mineral spirits) solution. Had little to no streaks, running and no air bubbles at all. Orange peel was all but gone after the second wetsand. It only took about 45 mins to roll on the paint (high density 4" roller) each coat. Sanding in between each coat took less than an hour with progressivly finer wet sand. I would say that I easily have less than 10 hours total on the paint job. I do believe if you want to spend more time, you can achieve a perfect paint job if you have the patience to do so, and prep the car perfectly. Again, it was not labor intensive at all, and actually quite fun. I am having more fun telling people it was rolled on and them saying "no way".
Be happy to share more detail and step by step instruction, and happy to answer any questions. My name is Brett, so I call this my "bratmobile". Have lots more I am going to do with it, already attracting attention in my driveway, can't wait to get it on the road.

[Redline]

I think that's a great result for just some time and effort. Others have said it before, but if you would ever want to later do a proper paint job, then someone will simply have a lot of extra prep work to undo the Rustoleum paint job.

I know exactly where people are coming from with this. I must have been ahead of the game, because I painted my Scirocco 25 years ago with a foam roller and black enamel from Canadian Tire on one hot summer day. I didn't even wet-sand it. It was a decent 10-footer and survived three more Canadian winters with a shine.

Mind you, I sold it on a rainy day.